Mention the word tone to many scanner
enthusiasts and you’ll get the same raised eyebrows or moan from most of
them. Tones are generally a source of aggravation for the scanner listener
as they have a habit of getting into the receiver in places where we don’t
want them. But there is an up side to all this noise.
Tones divide themselves into two categories: tones you can hear if you’re
listening to the radio, called audible tones, and tones you can’t hear,
called sub-audible tones. We’ll deal with the audible first since they’re
generally the most annoying.

Audible Tones

In their simplest form, a audible tone can
simply be used to let those listening know that there’s something
important coming, or that an important situation is underway. The beep
that many police departments put out just before an all points bulletin
serves just this purpose. If you weren’t paying attention to the radio
before, you should now because there’s something important about to be
said. Our local police also use a “situation” tone that beeps every 30
seconds or so to let everyone know that there’s an emergency underway and
any non-essential traffic (like license plate checks) should be held or
taken elsewhere.
Tones have all sorts of uses in electronics, and in two-way radio in
particular. By building a device to listen for a particular tone, or
sequence of tones, you can effectively get remote control of that device.

These days any seasoned broadcast DXer may
wonder how one ever survived in this hobby without the Internet. Obviously
the ability to communicate with large groups of DXers through bulletin
boards, e-mail lists, and instant messaging has been a major asset to the
hobby. On the other hand, trying to find valuable Internet resources can
be frustratingly time consuming. An Internet search for any DX-related
topic may return hundreds, if not thousands, of sites, some useful, many
not so useful.

To help you get through the noise,
occasionally “Broadcast Technology” will feature websites found to
significantly enhance the broadcast DX experience. Here are three
recommended websites. You can go on a DXpedition without leaving home via
DXTuners.com and V-Soft.com, and then check out the latest podcasts or
create your own on Odeo.com.

That’s right, you can do it. And when you’re
not DXing, check out the latest podcasts or create your own. Here are some
outstanding websites and exceptional DX logs guaranteed to keep your radio
dial spinning all winter.

DX Tuners provides access to remote-controlled
receivers located in Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Sweden, the
United Kingdom, the United States, and Venezuela. Here are some of the
special receivers as described by DX Tuners:

• Broome, Western Australia—Located in a very remote area of the world in
Western Australia’s tropics, this receiver is good for tropical DX and
other unusual skip.

There’s No Shortwave, But
You Can Still Try For Tonga’s Mediumwave Station!

By Bob Padula

The Kingdom of Tonga occupies some 700,000
square kilometers of ocean, but consists of only about 799 square
kilometers of land area, comprising 171 small islands, fewer than 40 of
which are inhabited. It lies in a time zone of UTC +13 hours, and the
capital is Nuku’alofa, located on the main island of Tongatapu. The island
is about 30 kilometers by 20 kilometers and is predominantly flat, with
extensive cultivation of many varieties of crops and vegetables
year-round.

The colonization of the Tonga Islands can be
traced back about 3,500 years. The origin of the first settlers is
unknown, but it is thought that there was immigration from the west, such
as the Philippines or the East Indies. It’s also believed that
pre-European colonizers of the island region of Samoa and Fiji were from
the same seafaring people. Over time, however, Tonga’s settlers lost
contact with their origins and the early people in Samoa and Fiji.
Early settlers depended on fishing, and used tools made from shells and
stones. In time, coconut, taro, breadfruit, yam, banana, and meat such as
rat, pig, dog, and fowl were introduced to their diet. Farming was
developed somewhat later and surplus food was readily shared with
neighbors.

The first fishermen built their homes around
the coast and the farmers moved further inland where the soil was fertile.
Villages and townships did not exist, nor was there any form of
centralized government or currency. Instead, an elite class ruled over
districts, which were subdivided to a middle management group who sublet
these land holdings to the common folk/slaves. It’s not certain that all
Tongans accepted this regulated form of culture. Tongans developed a
complex family ranking system whereby the eldest female (and her
descendants) held higher rank within the family than did the brothers.

Religion in the pre-European culture was
associated with violence and unrest. Great emphasis was placed on the
local spirits and ghosts who had a direct effect on daily life.

This month’s “Homeland Security” column is a
bit of a departure from the norm. Rather than focusing on all that is bad
in the world, for a change I decided to showcase a couple of items that I
personally have used and find extremely useful in the pursuit of our radio
hobby. I am constantly on the lookout for accessories and gear that will
make life on the bands a little more tolerable and provide increased
enjoyment.

Without a doubt, one of the more exciting—and
helpful—aspects of the radio hobby in the last few years has been the
advent of the multi-mode HF+ transceivers that have flooded the market.
Starting with the Vertex Standard (Yaesu) FT-817 transceiver (HF +
VHF/UHF, AM/CW, SSB, FM and DATA modes plus a general coverage receiver),
we’ve been treated to a wonderful assortment of very small, highly
portable, battery-powered radio gear. It’s designed for a variety of
applications, including QRP (low-power) operation from the shack, car or
trail, and emergency communications. The tiny FT-817 really sparked a
revolution within the ham radio hobby that has had major repercussions
throughout the world.

The FT-817 was soon followed by the ICOM
IC-703+ (HF plus 6 meters), the Elecraft KX-1 (four-band CW-only
transceiver with internal auto antenna tuner and battery pack), along with
higher powered radios like the FT-857, IC-706, TS-50S, and the FT-897. In
short, there is a whole world of portable radio gear out there to fit
anyone’s needs. All you gotta do is look!

“Come What
May”—These Signalmen Helped The Allies Retake The Philippines!

by R.B. Sturtevant, KD7KTS

In war, many acts of bravery are unsung or
forgotten with the passage of time. But in his autobiography,
Reminiscences, General Douglas MacArthur helped immortalize the heroism of
some when he wrote:

After the fall of Corregidor and the southern
islands, organized resistance to the Japanese in the Philippines had
supposedly come to an end. In reality, it had never ended…I was certain
that a great number of those indomitable defenders of Bataan and
Corregidor had escaped into the mountains and jungle that they were
already at work against the enemy. Unfortunately, for some time I could
learn nothing of these activities. A deep, black pall of silence settled
over the whole archipelago.

Two months after the fall of the Manila Bay
defenses, a brief and pathetic message from a weak sending station on
Luzon was brought to me. Short as it was, it lifted the curtain of silence
and certainly disclosed the start of the human drama with few parallels in
military history. The fire and the spirit of this indomitable nation
burned as brightly as ever. I knew that the remnant of my soldiers was not
abandoning the fight while they lived and had the means. The words of that
message warmed my heart. “Your victorious return is the nightly subject of
prayer in every Filipino home.”

In testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee
on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, an executive with the
Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) has recently
offered recommendations to improve communications following the
devastation of Hurricane Katrina. “Lack of coordinated incident command
and control, lack of direct support for communications centers and their
personnel, and the inability to communicate were obvious problems in every
area I visited,” said Willis Carter, APCO International first vice
president. He offered 10 recommendations for Congressional action to the
committee:

• Make significant improvements in local,
regional, and national interoperability.

• Plan and train for disasters.
• Establish common incident command structures at all levels of the
emergency response effort.

• Fund to ensure that public safety
communications networks are built and maintained to withstand worst-case
scenarios.
• Establish a deadline for nationwide public safety access to the 700-MHz
band.

• Allocate additional 700-MHz band spectrum
for mobile broadband operations to provide high-speed video and data to
and among public safety personnel and agencies in the field.
• Provide additional funding to assist public safety agencies in their
acquisition of state-of-the-art interoperable communications equipment.

• Consider public safety answering points (PSAPs)
and other emergency communications centers as core elements of the first
response structure.

As I have been outlining in this column for
the past several months, radio receiving and transmitting technology has
undergone a significant transformation since the beginning of this decade.
That transformation has been the switch from the use of “real” electronic
components to “virtual” components in a new type of radio design called
Software-Defined Radio (or SDR).

SDR works by sampling large bandwidths of
radio signals directly off the antenna, turning that information into
digital form and then processing that digital information through digital
signal processing (or DSP) software in a computer.

As in the case of any new technology, the
first casualty is generally the dominant technology that is replaced.
Currently the primary radio monitoring technology that will be the most
directly affected will be those radios using super-heterodyne (or simply,
superhet) circuitry, which have been mass produced since the 1920s.

The nice thing about the old superhet radios
was that they weresimple to build, so
anyone with a good understanding of electronic circuits could put one
together. Even for those who found the superhet radio complicated, there
were even simpler designs available, such as crystal radios. Therefore,
the true foundation for today’s radio monitoring hobby is that just about
anyone can put together a working radio.

MFJ Enterprises has reached back in time to
when radio was king and brought back to life some of the most popular,
classic antennas that gave the most powerful signals. These classic
high-performance antennas give you a powerful, booming signal and need
just two trees or other points for support! According to MFJ, the antennas
are made of stronger, more durable modern materials, with some adapted to
simple, direct coax feed, and are “hang and play.”

The MFJ-62XX single-band, two half-wave
element collinear array provides nearly 2 dB gain and twice the receiving
capture area of a half-wave dipole, with direct coax feed and low SWR
across the entire band. The MFJ-64XX four half-wave element collinear
array gives a 4.5-dB gain and four times the receiving capture area of a
half-wave dipole. It requires a balanced line tuner or a tuner with a
balun for balanced lines.

There’s no cutting, soldering, or trimming
required. The antennas come assembled and include custom fiberglass center
insulators, glazed ceramic end insulators and heavy duty seven-strand,
14-gauge hard copper element wire and solderless, crimped construction.
The antennas can be mounted a quarter-wavelength above the ground, but
perform best at a half- to three-quarter wavelength above ground. Lengths
are 55 to 136 feet horizontally. The feedline and stub simply hangs from
the antenna and can be bent at the bottom or pulled away at an angle to
make installation convenient.

For more information and complete pricing on
these antennas, which range in price from $39.95 to $109.95, contact MFJ
Enterprises at 800-647-1800 or write to them at 300 Industrial Park Road,
Starkville, MS 39759. Visit MFJ on the Web at
www.mfjenterprises.com. Please
tell them you read about their new antennas in Popular Communications.

The mediumwave (MW) broadcast band, also known
in the United States as the AM Broadcast Band (or simply AM band),
currently extends from 525 to 1700 kHz. In the United States and Canada,
channels are spaced in even 10-kHz increments starting at 530 kHz.
Elsewhere, channels are spaced in 9-kHz increments, starting at 531 kHz.

The hunt for signals from far away AM
broadcasting stations is an exciting activity, especially during the late
fall and winter seasons. The distant stations you’re able to hear depend
largely upon signal propagation. Propagation at these frequencies is very
different than it is for frequencies in the high-frequency range (3 MHz
through 30 MHz), varying depending upon the time of day, the season, and
other factors.

For mediumwave, the most obvious factor for
good DX is the time of day. The D layer of the ionosphere almost always
absorbs mediumwave radio signals during the daylight hours. As a result,
nearly all mediumwave signals received during midday hours will arrive by
groundwave propagation, rather than by skywaves refracted off the
ionosphere. Groundwave propagation makes reception of signals over a few
hundred miles away unusual in daylight. At night, however, the ionosphere
refracts these mediumwave signals, making it possible for radio station

The J-Pole antenna is one of the best known
amateur radio antennas. It’s simple to build, easy to put up, and
withstands the elements like a champ. Plans for building a J-Pole in one
of its many guises can be found all over the Internet and in the back
issues of this magazine and others catering to radio enthusiasts. In fact,
there are so many plans for this antenna that it’s tough to figure out
which one to use. As a new ham, and one who wanted to get on the air
sooner rather than later, I decided that buying a J-Pole was the best
option for me. The antenna I eventually settled on was KB9VBR’s All-Copper
J-Pole www.kb9vbr.com/jpole.htm.

I originally found this antenna for sale by
its builder, Michael Martens, on eBay. The price was right and, best of
all, I wouldn’t have to worry about soldering or tuning—the antenna is
shipped already assembled and ready to go. Michael responded to a
pre-purchase e-mail question very quickly, so I knew technical support
wouldn’t be a problem. He builds these antennas himself and has made
hundreds of them. Each antenna is individually tested before shipment, and
mine arrived via Priority Mail within two days, well packaged in
cardboard.

The antenna stands 69 inches tall, with the
radiator measuring 58 inches and the stub 19 inches. An SO-239 connector
is soldered on at the point of lowest SWR, ready to accept a coax cable
with a PL-259 fitting. I ordered the 2-meter version of the antenna, which
is tuned for 146 MHz and sports an SWR of 1.2:1 at that frequency.
According to Michael, the SWR is 1.4:1 or less throughout the entire
2-meter band. This version of the antenna will also load up on 70
centimeters, where the SWR is reportedly 2:1 to 2.5:1 between 445 and 450
MHz. Gain is reportedly 3 dB over a quarter-wave groundplane.

One thousand miles due south of Hawaii, nearly
on the Equator, lies a line of islands so remote that high-frequency SSB
is their only reliable link. I’m talking about Washington Island, Fanning
Island, and Christmas Island of the Republic of Kiribati.

“These islands are largely cut off from the
world, except for an occasional supply ship and maybe a day stop by a
cruise ship,” says Carlton Smith, KE5EUL, a ham radio operator with a
communications plan to allow Christmas Island to maintain medical comms up
and down the Line Islands, Republic of Kiribati. “We have received
permission from the Republic of Kiribati Ministry of Health and the
Telecommunications Authority to set the frequency of our medical
communications to 7312 kHz, upper sideband,” reports Smith. “The SSB radio
system is replacing an old one that never really got off the ground. Our
new SSB system will, for the first time, permit nurses on Fanning Island
to communicate reliably with doctors and nurses on their main island,
Christmas Island, and will undoubtedly alleviate suffering and save
lives,” adds Smith.

He recently visited these remote islands and,
as a ham operator, could easily envision how a 40-meter “hop” from the
Line Islands could easily fill in rock-solid communications.

Coordination was conducted over 20 meters to
an active ham, “Tek” T32LN, on Christmas Island. Coordinating with Smith
as well as a powerful maritime mobile shore station on the West Coast,
Ken, KB6EVR, it was determined that the Christmas Island hospital station
could be put back on the air with some needed repairs, but the equipment
at the other islands was damaged beyond repair in recent bad weather.

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which devastated
huge swaths of the Gulf coast last fall, did do at least one thing
worthwhile. They prompted the Board of REACT International, Inc. to
establish the REACT Disaster Fund. The fledgling REACT Disaster Fund will
focus on relief to ease the devastation caused by these two natural
disasters occurring in rapid succession. You read and saw horror stories
about the nightmare that haunted the authorities and the general public
alike after the hurricanes leveled their double whammy at the beleaguered
coastal areas of at least four states.

Now REACT hopes to make a dent in the terrible
losses resulting from the twin disasters. Readers can help to build up the
new REACT Disaster Fund. It is an opportunity to contribute to a relief
effort through an organization directly related to your radio hobby
interest. It’s easy to do. Just visit the REACT website at
www.REACTintl.org and click on “Donations.” You can make a secure donation
to the REACT Disaster Fund using your credit card. All donor information
remains strictly confidential.

Do it now so planning can begin for a rapid
REACT response. Please help while the idea is fresh in your mind. Your
generosity will be much appreciated by REACT and by those disaster victims
who will benefit.

Good news is word that Radio Afghanistan is
coming back on shortwave, and in fact may have done so by the time you
read this. The new effort will involve a 100-kW transmitter and several
antennas, which will beam programming to Asia, Africa, and Europe. The
station’s transmission facilities will be at Yakatoot, which apparently is
in or near Kabul. The Indian government is funding the facility. At this
point, we have no information as to times and frequencies.

Efforts are underway to reinstate the annual
test broadcasts from Radio St. Helena, which had to discontinue the highly
popular yearly transmissions a couple of years ago when the point-to-point
transmitter it had been using was retired from service. Station Manager
Ralph Peters would be happy to begin the broadcasts again, but the station
does not have a transmitter (other than for local services) and has also
had to deal with a budget cut. A decision was due back in September, but
even if it turned out to be a “no” there’s always “next year.” So, it
wouldn’t hurt to contact them and let them know you’d like to see the
annual broadcasts back again. The manager’s e-mail address is listed as
RalphPeters@helanta.sh, but
mail we’ve sent has bounced.

After fixing up a few nice old radios, you’ve
probably discovered that it’s also nice to have the right test equipment
on the bench when the need arises. We’ve talked about basic test equipment
in past columns, but this time around, for the first Pop’Comm of 2006,
we’ll be discussing signal tracers and how to use them to isolate and find
problems in radios.

There are two signal tracers being used on my
workbench, which are shown in Photo A. Both are Heathkits; one is a model
T-4, the other is a later version, the model IT-12. Despite the difference
in model numbers and age, both share very similar circuitry. Heath
regularly changed model numbers and cabinet styles (note the knobs) to
impart modern, updated looks to their test equipment lineup, while keeping
the same circuitry inside! I suspect a lot of folks bought into the
latest-is-greatest syndrome. From what I can see, both of these units use
the identical circuit and internal components. Nonetheless, they also
probably stayed with proven designs that worked as intended and were very
reliable. We’ll also cover the restoration steps needed to ensure these
instruments will continue to give years of trouble free service.

Why Do I Need One?

A signal tracer allows the tracing of a signal
from the antenna through the set’s mixers and IF amplifier stages,
detector, and audio amplifier stages. This lets the technician locate the
exact point in the radio where the signal is lost or becomes overly
attenuated or distorted. The signal tracer requires a signal source, which
can be either a convenient local strong radio station or, better yet, a
modulated signal from a good signal generator.

Although I’d love to play on the radio all
day—pausing only once each month to write this column—I still have to
bring home enough bacon to pay the rent and electricity bills. To that
end, I recently accepted a contract job helping three small, rural towns
set up a wireless Internet system. The town fathers call it “high-speed”
wireless, but by my standards it’s not even close to high speed, but
that’s another story. The really disturbing part came when I watched one
of the technicians sent by the company that provides the bulk of the
wireless bandwidth install a transmission hub atop a 30-foot Rohn 25 tower
that was itself bolted to the top of a 90-foot tall grain silo.

In farm country, big silos provide a handy and
inexpensive way to zip signals back and forth, avoiding the much higher
costs associated with commercial tower sites, etc. In a way, the rural
wireless companies are a lot like hams—taking advantage of alternative,
non-commercial solutions whenever possible. And the lucky silo-owning
farmers get 256 kilobits of reliable wireless Internet for free while
their phone-line-bound neighbors are lucky to maintain 33-kilobit dial-up
connections that don’t disconnect every few minutes.

Anyway, back to the scary stuff. The wireless
tech was installing the hub, antenna and the tower all by himself, in a
back corner of the lot, with nobody even glancing in his direction every
now and then! He’d climb the silo’s access ladder, pull up a tower
section, bolt it onto the top of the silo, climb down, climb up to the top
of the recently installed tower section, pull up another tower section,
bolt it on, etc., etc.

A. Around the turn of the 19th Century
driving an automobile was considered a rather daring sport. Driving out of
town was considered the height of recklessness because of bad road
conditions and the scarcity of repair facilities. In 1908, Valdemar
Poulsen developed a wireless telephone. An American, Arthur Collin also
developed one the same year. It was touted as the ultimate accessory for
anyone touring the country in a powerful car. Collin’s customers were
supposed to be drivers at garages who would rush out to service the
disabled automobiles. Collin was a little premature. He also ran into
legal problems and spent a year in prison for stock manipulation.

Q. Hitler tried to keep Germany and
occupied Europe from listening to “foreign” radio stations. How did he do
that?

A. Heavy fines and threats of prison
were first used. Then he simply took everyone’s radios away from them.
Over a million were confiscated in Holland alone. Some people were
“trusted” enough to keep their own radio with medium and shortwave
frequencies. Those who couldn’t be trusted were able to buy a “People’s
Radio,” which only picked up three stations. Transmitters were in Munich,
Hamburg, and Berlin, and were all Adolph all the time. There was a boom in
homebrew crystal sets, which picked up the BBC in London and Radio Oranje
from the Dutch Government in exile just fine.

Last month we had a brief overview of basic
MILCOM and MILAIR antenna systems. We even detailed the most popular
off-the-shelf monitoring antennas available from today’s manufacturers.
But half the fun of military monitoring is experimenting, tweaking, and
fine-tuning your antenna array so that it becomes the ultimate
military/utility communications signal-sucking system!

With that in mind, let’s look at some antenna
alternatives that might inspire you to get out the soldering iron, spools
of copper wire, coaxial cables and calculators and build your own (or
modify an existing) VHF/UHF antenna masterpiece!

Homebrew Antenna Design Programs

Designing an antenna is much more than
whipping out the calculator and figuring the length of a half-wave dipole
cut to your favorite frequency. As any antenna designer will tell you, it
is as much an art form as it is a science, but if you are as
mathematically impaired as I am, antenna design specifications listed in
technical journals are almost as confusing to decipher as a hormone-driven
teenager’s emotions.
However, even though I can’t help you with the latter, there are programs
(most available for download) that can aid you in designing your own
MILCOM/MILAIR antenna.

PC-Based Antenna Programs

A great place to find over 40 PC-based antenna
(and other) design programs is at
www.ac6v.com/antsoftware.htm.
Although most of the designs are for amateur radio receive and transmit
antennas, with a little re-figuring they can be adapted to serve your
MICOM/MILAIR needs.

One of my old college roommates is always
noting that, except for age 20, women hate any birthday with a zero in it.
Maybe this phobia is true for guys, too, but I meet a lot of folks who are
happy to be aiming for another year—and take pleasure in reaching
even-numbered milestones.

One of broadcasting’s first big birthdays was
its 40th, widely celebrated by electronic and print media alike in 1962. A
decade earlier, when TV was quickly capturing consumer attention, radio’s
future seemed comparatively dim, so not a whole lot was done to celebrate
broadcasting’s birthday number 30. To be sure, there’d been a bit of a
splash in ‘52 about broadcasting’s birth, but most of the focus was on
video’s future rather than audio’s past. By the early 1960s, though, the
undeniably robust television industry and decidedly revitalized (by music
and news-weather) radio business had the time, resources, and resolve to
reflect on its glories.

Here, courtesy of Pop’Comm reader Tony Gates
of Washington, D.C., we’ll open this month’s column with a look at some
40th anniversary hoopla, as presented in a special 1962 issue of Sponsor
magazine that Tony kindly sent my way.

David Sarnoff’s Two Cents

Though a shameless promoter of himself and the
Radio Corporation of America he controlled, David Sarnoff can be credited
with having possessed the wisdom to concentrate on the future, rather than
rest on past or even present performance. That is to say, as soon as
Sarnoff got RCA radio receiver production on its feet in the mid-1920s, he
set about building the National Broadcasting Company’s radio empire.

Communication humor. Now there’s a topic.
Couldn’t get my !@#$%! phone line connected properly to the modem. Loose
Connection! That’s what it was. I should have taken that as an omen and
written this in a fountain pen and sent it to New York via the Pony
Express, except they’re all extinct now.

So, last weekend I got to speaking with a new
guy at church and the conversation gets to Pop’Comm instead of the golden
rule, and it turns out that he’s been a loyal reader for quite some time
now. I was beginning to feel as if we should save this conversation for
the parking lot as I thought of the moneychangers and all that stuff, so
we did indeed “save it for later.”

What would you say the odds are that I would
run into a person who has actually been behind the microphone at a numbers
station?

Well, of course he can’t give an interview,
and not much more data than you already can surmise on your own, which is
almost nothing, except that he does appear to work for the government
(ours, I think), and after I arranged a clandestine meeting with none
other than Alice Brannigan in exchange for what I hope to be an interview
which will crack the lid off the whole question of “what the heck are
numbers stations anyway?” I find out that he’ll have to kill me if we
discuss it. Oh well.

So, onto another topic. Have you communicated
with any machines lately? Of course, there are the voices in your car, and
you can talk to your computer. I have often been heard talking to many
inanimate objects, often rather crudely, but today I created quite a stir
in a local building supply store that rhymes with Chrome Fleepo.